Freedom — a morality tale

September 16th, 2023

I found a book of morality tales, written at the beginning of the 20th century by Polish poet Jan Lemański. He never had much of a literary or public career — except as a scandalous husband of quite an extraordinary person — judging mostly by the fact that he has no entry on Wikipedia in English. He might be completely forgotten today, even in Poland, but I read his poems with pleasure and his tales are exquisite as well and just a touch absurdist — the way I like them. I will present some of them here, with my translation and paraphrasing — as he wrote in verse and I write in prose.

Freedom.

A Mouse ran away from home and stowed on a ship.

A ship that was sailing to Africa.

“Wow,” thought Mouse, “I am going to visit Africa, no one in my family has traveled that far”.

“My life is perfect,” she thought to herself as she was gnawing on a piece of biscuit someone had dropped.

“Everybody told me,” thought the Mouse, “that it was a mistake, that I was going to be caught as in a trap on a ship, and would be stuck somewhere at the mercy of luck and the fates and the waves”.

“Oh, how wrong they were,” she thought, “in reality — I do whatever I want, I sleep whenever and wherever I want, I eat all the crumbs the sailors drop here and there, and when the night comes I can sneak around the ship at will, and I can even run around the deck and enjoy the moonlight”.

“I am free and make my own choices,” thought Mouse, “decisions in life are mine and no one can take that away from me. And if I wanted to, I could leave the ship in Africa and start a new life there! Oh, and what a story that would be for such a small but resolute mouse like me!”.

The Mouse did not know that on the bridge of the ship, the captain bellowed at the helmsman— “Change the course! We will sail to the Arctic. There is a business awaiting us there!”.